Gregmal

I've seen Costco mentioned a few times and actually concur. I'm not positive about their wine, so I'll take others at their word here, but do know that Costco liquor is a sensational bargain. Their vodka is essentially Gray Goose for 1/3 the price, and I was shocked to find out that the Kirkland Scotch is Macallan 18 just private label. More or less Costco has a contract with Macallan where they buy the excess, and that is then sold as Kirkland 18. You can pay $160 for the Macallan, or $60 for Kirkland...

Just my 2c First, in order to get a fair offer, reject the 30K. That's terrible. Then, have your attorney ask them to make another offer, but with one condition, which will almost always ensure you are getting a fair offer... The condition is, whatever their offer is, if you don't like it, you can turn around and buy them out at that price. Second, in relation to the business... Did the owner work there as well, or was this passive? If the business was passive prior, depending upon where your gf is in life, there may be an even bigger opportunity to acquire the business and then focus on running it full time, which could significantly cut salary and wage expenses, plus probably fine tune other expenses...The gross profit gives you quite a bit to work with.

My go to's are: Gnarly Head- especially the 1924 red mixes, but all are pretty decent Hermann Wiemer Riesling Federalist Cab All are $20 or less per bottle As for investing, check out futures or pre-arrivals.

I saw this and actually found it quite amusing. No, not the content itself. But rather watching it and trying to figure out how many dozens of people, most likely making six figures plus, spent what was likely millions of dollars of corporate resources, and THIS is what they came up with? Holy incompetence! If this isn't proof that anybody can make a lot of money, than I don't know what is. I can't see how their entire team working on this isn't fired because the fact that this ENTIRE thing got this far means that EVERY ONE OF THEM has questionable judgment. As for D&G itself, IDK, I've never been a fan of their style, although I've never been a fan of any brand you pay 10x or more of the normal price for an every day item. I've bought Ferragamo shoes and Burberry wallets, and frankly they suck compared to my $65 New Balance shoes and $35 I forget the brand wallet. Only crazy expensive item I've found actually worth the tag relative to it's cheaper competitors are Yeti coolers.

This is so friggin true it's cringe worthy. It's the same thing I notice at VIC and other places as well. Some of these numb nuts get so wrapped up on crunching every number down to what is ultimately meaningless information, and compound that by scaring themselves into paralysis by overestimating the likelihood of every risk. It's amusing to watch sometimes. My favorite writeup I think I've seen in the past few years was Torico's VRX pitch last year. Drove the pencil and calculator crowd nuts, got low ratings, and then promptly crushed the returns of all those "well thought out", formulaic pitches you see all over the place.

This is a sham. Despite what is claimed, I guarantee he doesn’t manage a hedge fund. These are SMA’s.

Thanks for the article. This guy is a world class tard... I bet you he went to a nice school and has an MBA too.

Maybe I’m missing something but given the name of his site and blog this seems like more of a “product” selling platform than a real money management operation. Don’t judge a book by its cover, maybe, but I would never think putting money with a firm called optionseller.com or whatever was prudent. This guy got his Rolex selling product and that product blew up. Not an uncommon story on the street.

But why would it be? IIRC that was also the argument the Winklevoss dudes used and also arrived at roughly a $350K BTC price. I have no idea, ask SharperDingaan, he is the one who used this weird equivalence to argue that BTC was overpriced.

Home Depot is just plainly a great business. A chimpanzee could run it, with outsized returns. FFH IMO is a business that is what you make of it, with a very astute manager. The problem is, even great managers can make mistakes and be wrong. I don't know how you can f*ck up Home Depot...

I personally feel like if everyone says "recession" enough, it will force one to happen. Kind of like Beetlejuice. Same shit's been going on with auto now for half a decade...

A tragedy! https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/14/michael-avenatti-stormy-daniels-attorney--reportedly-arrested-for-alleged-domestic-violence.html

I've taken another tack, and that is to limit myself to a modest update on the news for the first 7 days of each month. Ditto for Twitter & I found myself not even wanting to visit there this month because it's so full of inflammatory nonsense. Spending nearly a month with your head in the sand is liberating. I highly recommend watching re-runs of Rowan & Martin's Laugh In to see how nothing has changed since the 70's. The absurdities are pretty funny when framed by great social satirists. The Obamas thread was about divorce... and only highlighted the Obamas as a great example of a couple who makes it work. Nothing political about it.

So in summary what I get, is that just like most value investors, Berkshire is sitting on too much cash and being way too frugal and nitpicky about buying stock.... Like most value investors I'd gander they underperform going forward. A good example of the cure here would be AAPL. When did they really turn a corner? When Einhorn and Icahn forced them to start deploying excess capital.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/01/einhorns-greenlight-scores-small-gain-in-october-investor.html So he got the market annihilation he's been hoping for, and to boot his top long(AFAIK), finished the month +9%. And the fund did 1%! Every month Greenlight finds new ways to surprise me.

In all fairness, they must be pretty creative to keep finding ways to get clicks and views. You'd think after a while people would get tired of it, but a lot of the networks know there is an insatiable desire from liberals for a lot of this. Like Jim Acosta for instance... let's see, how many times do we need to see the well rehearsed posturing, the grandstanding, and then predictably, without fail, 100% of the time, some anti-Trump, "gotcha" type of question or comment? That and the sound bites with no other purpose than to grab headlines. I was watching The Circus on Showtime and one of the episodes was showing the liberal mob following around Jeff Flake trying to persuade him to drop Kavanaugh. Some whackadoo granola eater runs up to him repetitiously pouting "but what do I tell my granddaughter?", "does she not matter?" and it's like "what the f*ck does any of this have to do with your grand daughter? you moron"... Or the elevator screamers, ""Tell me I don't matter!!!". Uhm.... Whatever issues you may or may not have had with sexual assault have nothing to do with this.... Crucifying a man without due process or even any legitimate evidence of ANYTHING isn't going to solve whatever mental issues you may or may not have from allegedly being assaults. But hey, all these sound bites get views and clicks and followers, so why not? My point, in relation to numbers I guess, is that they have no desire to be accurate, or get it right. They're careless on purpose...

I can't put a finger on one specifically but MSB IMO should re-rate to $40+, with $3.50+ in distributions along the way.

LOL

My sense is that some of these institutional investors just love diversification so much that they will happily put a portion of their funds in almost anything as long as its returns are expected to be uncorrelated with what they already have in their portfolios. More generally I think it’s a good sign that you are asking these questions. It is IMO worth spending some time studying the behavior of these investors, as they tend to be big suppliers of market inefficiencies that good and nimble value investors can profitably exploit. This is kind of what I've been told too. That's why, as great as Jim Chanos may be, institutional managers just relentlessly throw money at him so they can call themselves long/short... Hi Greg, thanks for the reply I have got a question. So are you sayin that instituitional investors do not really have a defined plan on how they deploy capital? Like, they don't care about the quality of the investment funds they are investing in, and only care about the generalised strategy that the fund is using? It's not a one size fits all answer but the crux of a lot of them now, simply because of how easy it is to raise obscene amounts of money, is definitely more skewed toward finding something marketable. I've heard a bunch how despite Chanos's numbers actually being quite poor(IIRC someone said he's lost about 4% a year on average since the early 1990's) he continually gets allocations from funds because it allows them to claim they have a diversified or long/short strategy. That alone probably raises millions despite these people knowing if history repeats, they're allocating money to a losing venture.

My sense is that some of these institutional investors just love diversification so much that they will happily put a portion of their funds in almost anything as long as its returns are expected to be uncorrelated with what they already have in their portfolios. More generally I think it’s a good sign that you are asking these questions. It is IMO worth spending some time studying the behavior of these investors, as they tend to be big suppliers of market inefficiencies that good and nimble value investors can profitably exploit. This is kind of what I've been told too. That's why, as great as Jim Chanos may be, institutional managers just relentlessly throw money at him so they can call themselves long/short...

I can simplify it for you in a way that many here might not like. Anyone managing more then a maybe low 8 figures is a salesman or employs one. Whatever strategy will raise assets is what they sell you. They get rich not by trouncing the market but by charging fees, and by the time you get tired of the pitch they've acquired their pound of flesh.

What do you consider cheap for RE companies? Do you base in on cash flow or earnings? Most important for me is sum of part for RE, provided it's got an honest management and/or capital structure that would allow a third party to come in and take it. Cash flow is great, but can be hidden, earnings don't mean much IMO. Being able to have someone see a discount to SOTP and swing in and take it out are the margin of safety.

I'd say moving to slightly negative on a YTD basis does nothing for how expensive the U.S. market is When earnings are growing, balance sheets are in good order, and you have a stab at top notch companies it surely does. It's not like you can go to Turkey and find yourself HHC. If you're talking about just plain "cheap" investments... sure, look elsewhere. If you want high quality businesses/brands, the US is quite reasonable now compared to prior years... Earnings grow until they don't. I'm looking ahead. The tax cuts gave the U.S and extra boost, but we're likely at peak levels of profitability here. The next 2-3 years will be significantly harder for the U.S. companies to continue profit growth - especially if the USD keeps rising. Add to that the rising interest costs as record amounts of debt are rolled at higher rates, and less of actually being qualified to deduct against profits and forward profit growth becomes difficult. Then again, we went through and incredibly long earnings recession back in 2015 and no one cared so....maybe they won't this time either. I guess part of my point is that even if growth stops, buying some of these businesses at 8-10x is pretty damn reasonable. Like you said, earnings went down in 2015... as long as they don't fall off a cliff, many appear to be bargains IMO. I don't see the fed boosting rates much further from here.

I'd say moving to slightly negative on a YTD basis does nothing for how expensive the U.S. market is When earnings are growing, balance sheets are in good order, and you have a stab at top notch companies it surely does. It's not like you can go to Turkey and find yourself HHC. If you're talking about just plain "cheap" investments... sure, look elsewhere. If you want high quality businesses/brands, the US is quite reasonable now compared to prior years...

Thanks, will take a look.